Play to the Future
by Anakin McFly
Summary: (COMPANION TO THE REED) You mean you made a time machine... out of a FLUTE? (CHAPTER 2 UP)
1. Default Chapter

This is a re-upload.  The first upload was at a BAD time. I'M BAAAAAAACK! =D *jumps up and down in excitement* YAY! ^_^ Um… yeah.  I know the first chapter isn't that great, the main character hasn't even appeared yet, but it'll get better, I promise! I just need to warm up… haven't written band stuff in a while… Play to the Future 

A companion to The Reed

2nd in the as yet untitled band series. (There's going to be 5 stories altogether)

~-~-~

Chapter One 

2006

            "You mean you built a time machine… out of a FLUTE?" Martyn asked incredulously, staring down at the shiny instrument (author drools) in the hands of his fellow trumpet player, Kenneth.  Around them, the band members milled around the place looking bored and waiting for the newly elected band major to come.  Things had been fairly normal the past few days, and the Reed deaths barely a week ago had almost been forgotten.

            13-year-old Kenneth shrugged at his section-mate.

            "My uncle did it, not me.  What'd you think? I'm already failing science on a somewhat regular basis."

            "Yeah, but a FLUTE?"

            "He just asked me for some shiny metal thing, and I didn't dare to give him my trumpet, because I just got it."

            Martyn suddenly realised something.

            "Wait… you play the flute?" he asked. "Why didn't you say so when we were allocating you your instruments?"

            "I played it in my last band… and I guess I wanted to try something new…"

            "Well, that's okay then, as long as you don't play it anymore and ruin your embouchure.  We can't afford that if we want to get a gold for our next competition… we need three in a row to get this arts award thingy, and we only have two so far." Martyn paused before continuing.  "Oh yeah, so how does the… uh, time machine work?"

            Kenneth had been looking guiltily nervous when Martyn was talking about ruining his embouchure, but now his face held an expression of relief.

            "I can't really remember that well… I think he said something about how all the notes in C major correspond to a different one-digit number, like C is 1, D is 2, E is 3 and so on until the next octave E which is 0.  The sharps and flats don't do a thing, except for B-flat.  You're supposed to play it first, to start the thing, then you play whatever sequence of notes you want to enter the date you want to go in the order of year, month, date, hour, minute, second.  Once the thing is full it'll stop registering.  See, it's displayed here."  Kenneth pointed to the smallest of LCD display screens embedded in the foot joint of the flute, currently not lighted up.  "Then you play B-flat again to activate them.  My uncle said it was powered by sound energy or something, it's just been recharged though."

            "Okay, then you get sent to whatever date you put in?"

            "Yup. See…" Kenneth blew a few random notes on the flute, and the LCD screen lit up to display the inputted time – 23 July 2001, 2:41 p.m.."

"Uh… would you arrive naked or something?"

            "Nah, anything in direct contact with your skin would go along too," Kenneth replied, placing the flute back on the table.  "… so your shoes would get left behind if your socks don't have holes in them."

            "Well, fine, but all this still doesn't explain why your trumpet mouthpiece has suddenly gone missing."

            Kenneth smiled nervously, mentally slapping himself on the forehead.  So much for Martyn forgetting how the conversation had started in the first place…

            "Uh… I was getting to that… see, my uncle and I tried to test the flute so we strapped my mouthpiece to it and sent it one minute into the future, but one minute later the flute was there and my mouthpiece wasn't.  I think it fell off on the journey or something…"

            The boy looked up to see Martyn giving him this very sceptical look.

             "O…kay.  Go ahead and tell that to our SL, but I doubt that Crystal is going to be very impressed by the fact that your mouthpiece was the world's first time traveller."

            Kenneth was about to give some answer to that when the band major burst through the door, squishing a clarinettist in the process.  (The latter died.)

            "OI! EVERYBODY!" 

            The room went silent.  All that could be heard was the sound of the dead clarinettist sliding off the door, leaving behind a streak of blood in his wake.  

            "The school administration has been complaining of lumps in the school field, so apparently we didn't do such a good job when burying our dead last week," the band major continued.  "Right, so I want everybody to get down there now and flatten those lumps."

            No one moved.  All were staring at a certain corpse lying beside the door.

            "Oh, you can take that too." 

            No response. 

            "DO IT NOW OR DROP 700!"

            The band room was cleared in a record five seconds. 

TO BE CONTINUED… Please review! ^_^  Just clicky on that little blue button over there…

Oh, and another thing… what do you think should be the title of my band story series?

1) Weird Tales From Band

2) Bandzone

3) The Musical Twilight Zone

4) One Time At Band…

5) The Rest Are All So Stupid/Corny/Lame/Lousy That I Want This Instead: *insert your suggestion here*


	2. Back to the Past

Play to the Future

Chapter 2

The phone rang, bringing 14-year-old Alexis out of Dreamland.  Groaning, she got up and stumbled over to the telephone to answer it.

"Hello?"

The caller was a classmate asking about Question No. 15 in the Maths worksheet; was it a typo error, another one of the teacher's insanity fits or just plain difficult? Alexis's eyes roved around the room as she listened, and as they settled on the clock, she suddenly felt very awake. 

"Well?" her caller asked.

Alexis swore into the phone.

"I'M LATE FOR BAND!"

"So?" questioned the non-bandie.

Slamming down the receiver, the teen ran towards the door, only to remember her instrument.  Executing a sharp U-turn on the staircase landing, Alexis zipped back into her room, grabbed her oboe and exited the house.

One of the advantages of living near to school was that it was within cycling distance; but today the school seemed twice as far away.  All Alexis could think of as she pedalled were the hundred or so pushups that would almost definitely be awaiting her.

The new band major had been growing stricter.  Just two days ago he had made Hazel, a clarinettist, do 200 pushups for falling asleep during one of his long, boring lectures.  Gone were the days of ten, twenty, even ninety pushups.  Coming were those of the old band major and his five hundred or more.  He might have been dead and buried, but his spirit still seemed to live on…

Wistfully, Alexis remembered her now dead bandmates.  Jeslyn, Marc, Joel, Corinne, the old band major and the two oboists… Of those, she had only been close to Jeslyn and Joel, probably because they were from the same section as her – flutes and oboes.  Jeslyn had been one year her junior, but still they had managed to be good friends.  Only Jeslyn knew that she used to play the flute, but decided to switch to oboe after she'd graduated because she didn't want to march anymore.  And Jeslyn had sacrificed herself for her friends, not knowing the little good it had done.

As for Joel, Joel the _Lord of the Rings_ fan, he had been one of the most dedicated band members Alexis knew.  Even after leaving school, he had joined the alumni band and would come quite frequently to visit them, to play, to give them tips or just help in whatever areas they needed.  No one ever told him to come, and yet he had done so by his own will, remaining as much a part of the band as anyone else… that is, until The Reed killed him.

But the events of a certain murderous oboe reed were past and gone; and it was no use thinking about them anymore.

Alexis cycled through the school gate, dumped her bicycle by the wall and ran upstairs to the band room, not noticing the rest of the band busily (and not very successfully) trying to flatten the lumpy school field.

Upstairs was strangely quiet.  Usually at that time, the place would be filled with the sounds of various musical instruments… but not today.  

Alexis opened the door.  Inside was dark; the lights were off, but the air-conditioning was still running.  Someone was going to have to pay for that later.

"Hello?"

No response.

The girl flipped on the lights and tiptoed in, shutting the door behind her.  Where was everybody? They weren't marching that day… or were they? The instruments were still lying in various positions all over the room, so probably not.  It was almost as if the room's occupants had left in a hurry… as if someone or something had scared them away…

Alexis let her oboe slip off her shoulders to the floor, and walked over to the drawn windows to see if she could find any traces of the band.  She couldn't see much from there.  Sighing, Alexis turned to leave, when she spotted a flute lying unnoticed on the table.

Perhaps she hated to admit it… but she missed the flute dearly, ever since she stopped playing it.  True, she loved the oboe as well, but Alexis had never really gotten over her previous instrument even though it had been her own choice to quit playing it.  And she had not touched, much less played, a flute in two years…

If someone were to come in then, she would be in big trouble and she knew it, but for the moment she didn't care.  The flute seemed to be calling out to her, beckoning her, as Alexis's fingers closed slowly over the shiny instrument and brought it to her lips.  It felt _different_ somehow, but a flute was a flute… wasn't it?

Meanwhile…

"I bet you a hundred dollars that we're the only band which has been made to flatten the lumps in their school field because they did a lousy job when burying the members killed by a rabid oboe reed," Martyn commented, bringing his shovel down hard on a lump.  It barely budged.

David rolled his eyes.  "You don't HAVE a hundred dollars."

"Yeah, but that's beside the point.  I mean, this is totally stupid, dude!"

The two of them dug on in silence for a while more before Martyn spoke again.  "You don't happen to have any water around, do you?" Martyn asked.  "I'm getting really thirsty here."

"I've got some in the band room."

"I meant, do you have any HERE."

"In that case, no."

Martyn sighed.  "I suppose there's always the water coo…"

"And the water coolers are all not working," David cut in.

"What?"

"The school admin said that they'd cut off our water supply until we flattened the lumps in the field." David shrugged.  "But you could always sneak into the band room and get my water bottle.  Bring it down.  I'm thirsty too."

The two boys stared at the band major.  He was adapting to his post fast; before being elected band major, Sean had just been one of the band.  Now, however, he was lounging on the grass the other side of the field under the shade of an umbrella, his shovel lying by his side as he watched his pitiful subjects go about their work.

The coast was clear.  David and Martyn exchanged grins, and the latter hurried off, unnoticed, to the school building.  

Martyn whistled the tune of a random band piece as he ascended the stairs to the band room.  He checked a water cooler on the way and found that it was indeed, as David had said, not working.

He swung open the band room door.  Funny… the lights and air-conditioning were on.  Someone would have to pay for that later.  Martyn started to go look for David's water bottle, when what he saw stopped him in his tracks.

Someone else was already in the room.

Cautiously, Martyn walked in and turned.  At the other side stood a girl getting ready to play a flute, her back facing him.  She didn't look like any of the flautists; which could only mean one thing.  Somebody had just taken advantage of Sean's absence to break the golden rule of band.

She hadn't seen him yet.  Martyn gave a sly smile.  He would be able to catch that rule-breaker red-handed… Slowly, he crept up towards her and clamped a hand down on her shoulder just as she played a note, a middle B-flat.

The girl whipped around in shock – Martyn saw that she was one of the new recruits… what's-her-name… Alexis – but his triumph in catching her was short lived.  All of a sudden he felt a shockwave run through his body and the room began to dissolve, spinning and shifting around him as the flute- time machine was activated – sending the two of them five years into the past.

TO BE CONTINUED…

ChibiSkunkSaria: Yup, another death. Morbidness is fun. ^_^

Irish Bug: What's so original about 'The Musical Twilight Zone'? Rod Serling will turn in his grave and his descendants will come after me… I already can get my hands on a flute. My brother plays it in band. ^_^


End file.
